Rapid Decline - Anonymous employee Xbite Employee Review

Xbite was once a thriving company and an amazing place to work - However, due to difficulties following covid, Brexit, etc... things have gone downhill fast. The company was understandably forced to make redundancies to protect its interests, however, this is not why I am writing a bad review - I am writing a bad review because of the manner in which the company handled these difficult times, ultimately leading to myself and many others handing in their notices. 1) Poor communication - The communication from management was awful, nobody knew what was going on, and when we did it was conveyed in a highly unprofessional and ineffective manner. 2) Remote work - While the company did initially allow employees to work from home, the return to the office was handled poorly. There was little to no notice, and at times it was contradicting government advice. 3) Removal of benefits - All benefits were immediately suspended with no information about when they might come back. Salaries at Xbite have always been poor, but these benefits always made it worthwhile, this is no longer the case. 4) Incompetent management - The senior leadership team is genuinely incompetent, they frequently make poor business decisions leading to further decline, are unable/unwilling to properly communicate, and conduct themselves in an unprofessional manner. 5) Poor salaries - Like most companies, Xbite boasts "competitive" salaries, and this is true... If they were competing with a Chinese sweatshop. Salaries at Xbite are well below industry normals, and there isn't much room to progress. 6) Fear mongering - The company has recently started using redundancies as a tool to increase productivity, if you aren't prepared to do unpaid overtime or take responsibilities above your role and salary chances are you will end up on the "redundancy list", and they make that quite clear. 7) Blame culture - A lot of Xbites problems can be traced up the ladder to the senior leadership team, but instead of accepting any kind of responsibility the blame is passed around to individuals. The owner is especially guilty of this, instead of trying to understand and mitigate employee concerns he simply points the finger at someone else. 8) Micromanagement - You are micromanaged in everything you do, by people who have no or very little knowledge of your profession. You will get someone who has never written a line of code in their life telling you how things should work - and of course, when it inevitably doesn't work out you can bet it's all your fault. 9) Lack of trust - Xbite has an inherent trust issue, you feel like someone is always looking over your shoulder. This ties into the fear-mongering, and I would almost describe it as a school-like environment, a lot of the trust you get from other businesses just isn't there, and you feel like a child who can't be trusted to do anything unsupervised. I hold no grudge against Xbite, it was once a truly fantastic place to work, and it's a genuine shame to see it declining as fast as it is. But if you are reading this looking for your next role, I would urge you to look somewhere else, in its current condition Xbite does not make a good employer and they are in no position to provide you with a secure role from what I have seen. Personally, I have found significantly more success since my departure from the business.